Illness sidelines João Almeida from Portuguese season start; Paris-Nice the debut race for 2024
Cycling
João Almeida is having a key year in his career, as for the first time he sets off to race the Tour de France. In a season with many different plans, he hoped to start off his season close to home in Portugal. However, an illness has wreaked havoc in his plans and this has been delayed several weeks.
Almeida was planning to start his season at the Figueira Champions Classic and right after race the Volta ao Algarve - where he was set to be a favourite, both for fans and for victories in both races. However he was sidelined due to illness. Sources at this Saturday's race have confirmed to CyclingUpToDate that Almeida has suffered with tonsillitis and required over a week of rest off the bike recently. This is a pebble in the shoe of the Portuguese rider, who will now likely start his season at Paris-Nice - where he initially he had big goals of fighting for the final podium.
Almeida is racing the Ardennes classics later this spring for the first time, and will also be part of the Tour de Suisse before racing the Tour de France together with Tadej Pogacar, Adam Yates and Juan Ayuso. He will be one of the many strong cogs on UAE Team Emirates' wheel.
The 25-year old still has hopes of racing on Portuguese roads later this year in the World Tour peloton; the Vuelta a España starts in Lisbon and the first two days of racing are not far from his hometown near Caldas da Rainha. It is a great motivating factor for last year's Giro d'Italia podium finisher, who is currently in Andorra looking to build back his form into the upcoming weeks.
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- Ahhh..... you have to understand the "strange" diversity concepts of the BBCslappers6621-12-2024
- Avoiding him is a good strategy, you get more wins and then you can compete in the TDF relatively relaxed. Pit yourself against Pogi and not only there will be no wins, it will be considerable mental setbackabstractengineer21-12-2024
- If you hold onto then, you blowup in a minute and then you finish 5 minutes down like Ben O'Connorabstractengineer21-12-2024
- Based on what argument?Mistermaumau21-12-2024
- Agreed except the length of climbs, pretty sure you can stretch that to about a km unless we’re talking about half a dozen in quick succession.Mistermaumau21-12-2024
- Lot of contradictory information floating around world cup contenders, someone should do some tidying up.Mistermaumau21-12-2024
- A bit much to suggest that Pogacar is better than MvdP on most terrains. The only terrain Pogacar is clearly better is long climbs, on any other terrain they are pretty even except flat cobbles and short and steep climbs (max a few 100 mtrs) where MvdP is clearly better than Pogacar.Velovibes21-12-2024
- The likelihood of RE improving enough at this point to outclass TP or JV is less than zero.verve82521-12-2024
- That’s the most stupid thing I’ve read for a long time, did you not go to school and learn even the most basic physics? Aero depends on one thing only, drag, drag depends speed and the relationship is squared and apart from maybe at zero or the speed of sound or due to side winds that relationship is valid at all speeds, it dies not “suddenly” start at a magic number. Very simply, the faster you go the more the effect becomes important. If you think 25km/h is needed to have noticeable effects you’re delusional, athletic WR are cancelled as soon as winds top 2m/s that’s 7.2km/h, why because the assistance is already too important at that speed and the times prove it. You don’t even consider wind which can significantly increase the effective speed for aerodynamics and you underestimate speed of climbs, 6% is ridden more at 30 than 25km/h, a speed at which early generation high rims were considered to have more advantages than disadvantages. And finally, as in normal races you can’t just switch bikes according to terrain, it’s pretty pointless to discuss climbs as a separate situation, the aero will have justified itself plenty during the rest of the ride.Mistermaumau21-12-2024
- If you look at how much TP progressed in that 1 1/2 years you can no longer say that’s nothing. If Remco improves as much he’s a challenger!Mistermaumau21-12-2024